


Paradox

by Waldo



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-04
Updated: 2006-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's starting to realize that he now has a love/hate relationship with the smell of hospital disinfectant</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox

It was becoming a paradox.

For the first thirty-five years of his life he had hated the acrid, antiseptic smell of hospitals and rehab centers and infirmaries. Just the smell of the disinfectant particular to medical settings was enough to trigger an avalanche of bad memories. Injuries – his own, others. A prolonged illness a year after he'd gotten out of the academy that had almost cost him his wings. Losing people he cared for.

But now those memories were overlayed with other memories. Scary memories to be sure – being attacked by a three-foot bug, a last-minute dive through the gate as the Wraith swept an area, waking up from having his body hijacked by an insane alien pilot – but waking up in the infirmary also meant making it home, being in one piece, being himself…

… and it meant Carson. Since leaving Earth for the Pegasus Galaxy, he'd been injured a fair number of times. And when he lost consciousness, he noticed three things upon waking: the smell of the infirmary, the warmth of the hand invariably wrapped around his own and the soft lilting brogue asking if he was finally seeing fit to join the world of the waking again. The three were starting to intertwine in his mind.

Recently he'd come to accept that more often than not when Carson came to bed he was going to smell a little like the infirmary. At first it had bothered him. He didn't want the bad memories encroaching on their nights together. But over time he learned that he could keep the memories at bay by giving Carson his full and undivided attention. Not that that was, in anyway, a hardship.

And if the smell became too overpowering, there was always the suggestion of a shared shower to deal with that.


End file.
